35. Lysandra
“Goddess, you are so fucking beautiful,” Puck says, gently stroking my cheek.
I sputter around the gag in my mouth and try to wriggle closer to get him to touch me, kiss me, or do anything to alleviate the throbbing in my core, but I can’t move.
“So impatient.” He clicks his tongue. I feel another vine snake around my ankle as saliva dips down my chin. Puck gathers the moisture on a finger and slowly trails it down my body. My breath hitches when he reaches my breasts, but then he lifts away, leaving me whimpering.
At some point in his life, Puck learned shibari and currently has his vines wrapped around me in more knots than I can count. And that doesn’t include the ones keeping me hanging from the tree branch he grew in one of his spare rooms.
I’m hanging parallel to the ground, staring at the floor, with my hands tied behind my back and my legs bent at the knee, reaching for the sky. Every time I inhale, I can feel the line of vines that tie down my chest, looping around my breasts before knotting above my sternum. They crisscross down my torso, my hips, and my parted thighs.
“How are the vines?” Puck asks, removing my gag. “Too tight?”
“Good.”
“Can I blindfold you?” I nod. “I need the words.”
“As long as you touch me after. I expect him to use another form of his magic, but he withdraws a black, silk blindfold from his pocket and carefully ties it around my head. Darkness swallows my entire world, everything disappearing except for Pucks hands on me. My body purrs as he brushes my hair back from my face before cupping my cheeks in his hands.
“Good girl,” he praises and kisses me. It’s sloppy and intense and makes my body vibrate with tension. “I think my princess asked me to touch her.”
“Yes.” The word turns to a shriek as Puck starts tickling my ribs. I’m ticklish on a good day, but being tied up like this makes it so much more intense.
“You need to be more specific with your requests,” he laughs. I’m a mess of sensation—laughing and screeching and crying. All at once, Puck’s hands pull away and a vine starts vibrating against my clit. I actually mewl. “That better?”
With one more soft kiss, Puck stands and circles me, keeping one hand on me at all times so I know where he is. Not being able to see makes me hyper-aware of his heavy footfalls on the wooden floorboards, and his shallow breath as he takes me in, all trussed up for him. He alternates from feather-light caresses down my spine to rough, possessive handfuls of my ass.
Between the low vibration on my clit and the anticipation, I can barely breathe. The air is thick with want. It makes me feel alive.
He steps between my thighs, and I hear the tell-tale sound of a zipper before he thrusts inside me all at once. “Fuck me, princess. You’re soaked.”
I let out a desperate yes as he fucks me in earnest. The vines that suspend me swing in time with his thrusts, making each one harder than the last. Goddess, he feels amazing. Puck fills me the perfect amount, enough to stretch me without making me sore. Which is good, since this is only the first time he’ll fuck me tonight.
“Should I give you more?” he grunts, his voice straining with exertion. A second vine, this one already lubricated, brushes against my asshole. My eyes roll back at the brief contact. “Of course, you want that. My dirty girl, you want me to fuck both your holes, don’t you?”
“No,” I mumble.
“You sure?” he asks, amusement coloring his words. “Give me a color, princess.”
When Puck and I started fucking more regularly, we began using the traffic light system—not just red. Green is good, yellow is pause and let’s talk about what happened, and red, as always, is stop. He checks in often when he’s dominating me—especially when I’m a brat and won’t tell him how I truly feel. What can I say? He fucks me harder when I mouth off to him.
“I asked you a question,” he says.
“Technically, you gave me an order,” I snark. All movement stops. The vine circling my asshole and the one on my clit disappear and Puck pauses, buried to the hilt but not moving an inch.
I scream out, desperate for him to continue.
“You know better,” he admonishes with a sharp smack to my ass that stings before he rubs away the hurt. “Brats don’t get to come, Lysandra. Answer me.”
“Green.” There’s another swat to my ass before Puck starts again. It’s almost too sensitive, but it’s not long before it feels pleasurable again. “Fucker. I was close.”
“Think how good it will feel when you’re finally allowed to come.”
I mumble an answer. The other day, Puck edged me for most of the night, and when he finally let me come, I blacked out. It was the most intense orgasm of my entire life. It was like six orgasms in one, and while I’m not eager to repeat the torture that led to the event, I wouldn’t mind something half as strong.
The second vine breaches the entrance of my ass and thickens. “How do you feel?” Puck asks.
“So. Fucking. Full.” The fact that I can’t move, that I can only take everything Puck is giving me, amplifies the whole experience.
“I said I didn’t want two holes filled,” I say.
Puck begins to fuck me in tandem with his vine. “Your body tells me a different story.”
“If you would— I stutter as the vibration increases. “—let me finish.” I’m so fucking close. My muscles are coiling tight, my toes curling. It’s right there. So. Fucking. Close. “I want you in my mouth too.”
Puck groans, and it’s all too much. The sound of him, the vibration, the feeling of him filling every inch of me. I come with a scream loud enough to rattle the stone walls. It’s ecstasy, bliss, and it continues on and on.
When I finally come down from my orgasm, Puck slips out of me, leaving me empty until he replaces his cock with another vine. He circles me and pulls off the blindfold. “You want me to fuck that pretty little mouth?” he asks.
“Goddess, yes.”
“I’m going to move you.” When I agree, the vines start shifting, sliding around me as he flips me over so I’m staring at the ceiling. “I can’t keep you in this new position long, princess. If you feel numb or dizzy, I need you to let me know immediately.”
My head lowers toward the ground and my feet raise in the air, so I’m upside down and eye-level with his cock. He’s rock hard and shining with my arousal. I lick my lips in anticipation. Puck kneels so he can kiss me as the vines finish securing me. The kiss is messy since I’m upside down, but fuck it’s good. Puck always kisses me like he’s a man starved.
“Stick out your tongue, princess.” Normally, I’d fight him a little bit, but he said we don’t have much time in this position, and I want nothing more than for him to fuck my throat like this.
The head of his cock slides past my lips, and I swirl my tongue around the tip before he pushes in farther. “That’s right, swallow me down,” he preens as I relax to let him in. I gag a little, and he pulls back enough to give me a breath.
The next time he slides in, the vines begin moving, filling my pussy and my ass and vibrating gently against my clit. They work me as Puck continues his slow pace. I want more. I want him undone. I want him to rut into me so hard that my voice is hoarse tomorrow.
My magic seeps out, a flowering vine snaking out and playing with Puck’s balls as he continues to fuck my mouth. He makes a deep and low sound but doesn’t increase his pace, even when his vines do. I’m a shaking, panting mess, and yet it feels like Puck isn’t any closer to coming.
Another vine snakes out from me and slips around to Puck’s ass, gently brushing against his hole. “By the fucking goddess.” He pulls out and cups my face. “You want to fuck me too, princess?”
“Yes,” I beg. The vine inside my pussy has started vibrating, and I can barely think straight.
Puck waves his hand, and my vine is now dripping with lube. “Go on, then,” he says, and thrusts back in. I slide the vine into his asshole and he swears. That does it. He starts fucking me with abandon, so hard it makes my eyes water.
“Such a good fucking slut,” he grunts. “I’m going to come in your mouth and you’re going to swallow every single drop, aren’t you? My greedy—” thrust, “—perfect—” thrust, “—princess.”
Puck comes with a roar, filling my throat and making me gag on his release, but I swallow every drop of it. “Now come for me,” he commands as he rides out the end of his orgasm. His hands trail up the ropes and pinch my nipples, which are so sensitive from being contained that I come instantly. One orgasm turns into the next as more of Puck’s release spills into my mouth.
When we’re both panting, the vines gently lower me to the ground and start to unwind themselves from my body. My head spins as the blood drains back into my body, but Puck is there, holding me to his chest as his vines vanish. He rubs my wrists, then my ankles, helping the blood flow back to my previously restrained limbs. When he’s certain I’m okay, he lays us both down beneath the tree branch on a bed of moss.
“You did so well,” he says as his magic cleans us off. “You made me come so hard.”
“Same,” I hum. He summons a blanket, wrapping it around us as his continued praise warms me from the inside.
“Well,” a female voice says. Puck jumps up, shielding me with his body.
Edina leans in the doorway, her lips turned up in amusement. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Puck seethes, summoning underwear and sliding them on while I clutch the blanket to my chest.
Her expression is unreadable as she looks between the two of us. With the exception of Farah and Puck’s attendant, we’ve been good about keeping our truces quiet. Until now, I suppose.
“You’re welcome for waiting in the sitting room until you were done,” she says, tossing her blonde hair behind her shoulder. “Sorry, I’m interrupting aftercare. I assumed I gave you enough time, but I didn’t account for the vine bondage.”
I want to burrow into the floor and die. Edina not only caught us with our pants down, she caught me hogtied.
“Kudos on the creative use of plant life, by the way,” she continues. “I swear everyone except my betrothed has fun sex magic. Hades has her shadows; you have your vines. Radley can suck the air from your lungs so it’s basically magical choking, which you know I freaking love—”
“Edina, fuck off,” Puck says.
She laughs melodically. “Right, well, when you want to talk about this clusterfuck— she gestures wildly between the two of us, “—I’ll be in my guest room.”
Edina ambles out of the room, flinging the door shut behind her. Puck shakes his head as I hide further under the blanket, but when our eyes meet, we dissolve in a fit of laughter.
“We should probably go down there,” he sighs, sliding beneath the blankets beside me and pulling me against him in the very opposite way of his suggestion. I nestle into the crook of his neck. I’ve fallen asleep in his arms every night for almost two weeks; being together like this feels natural. A way to reset, to recharge.
“This truce is coming to an early end?” I ask, unable to hide the disappointment in my voice.
“What if the truce is on pause?” he offers. “We go meet with Edina and Eldoris, listen to their bullshit opinions about how our arrangement is self-destructive—”
“Buzz kills.”
“Then, we’ll come back upstairs and fuck two—three—more times before we pass out.”
“You’re a visionary,” I say, and stand, pulling him up with me. “But first, we need to shower.”
“I used a cleansing spell; we don’t have to shower.”
“But if we did…and we happened to take a little longer…” I raise my eyebrows and Puck’s face breaks into a wide smile. By the goddess, that smile. It lights up the entire fucking realm.
“And you think I’m the visionary.” He wraps his arms around my waist and tosses me over his shoulder. I shriek as he runs with me into the bathroom, smacking my ass along the way before placing me on the tile and dropping to his knees.
“I like you down there,” I tease, fumbling to turn on the warm water.
“This is the only place you’ll ever get me on my knees, princess.” His tongue licks up my entire slit.
“We’ll see about that.”
Much longer than the length of a normal shower later, Puck and I make our way down to Edina and Eldoris’ guest rooms. He keeps finding subtle ways to touch me that have me ready to abandon this meeting in favor of going back to bed. His hand grazes mine before pulling away, or he puts his hand a little too low on my back as he’s ushering me through a door, or—the one time he was feeling bold—grabs my ass.
It gives me glimpses into a future where he’s mine.
A future that can never happen, I remind myself.
Raucous laughter spills from the doorway when we reach the room. Puck and I exchange a glance and he knocks once before the door swings open on its own.
“There they are!” Edina lifts a mug of something piled with whipped cream in cheers. Most of the second generation is sitting around their small sitting room. Radley has his head in Devorah’s lap while she absently strokes his long hair and sips from a glass of red Faerie wine. Edina is perched on the arm of Eldoris’ chair, Larisa is on her own, her legs crossed and looking a little more uncomfortable than usual with the group, and Baxter is slumped against Izar where they sit on the wooden floor.
“Do we have to keep pretending we don’t know they’re fucking?” Radley says with the tact of a troll. Devorah flicks his forehead.
Maybe we haven’t been as sneaky as we thought.
“Well, not anymore,” Devorah chides.
I cross my arms, shrinking into myself. I’m not sure how to do this. In private, we’ve been behaving like a couple. Acting like that, and doing those things in public is an entirely different story.
“I’ll grab you a drink,” Puck says, and Edina summons a loveseat for us. When Puck joins me, he sits close, but not close enough that we could be cuddling. Which is good, even if my entire body is begging to sink into his arms.
Not here. Not in front of this group.
“So, we heard you gave Edina a show,” Izar coos.
“I do have an uncanny talent for interrupting people having sex,” she muses, and Eldoris whispers something in her ear that makes her giggle.
“At least you stayed outside,” Puck says into the rim of his glass.
“I assumed you were with some random female,” she continues, assessing the both of us. “I had no idea I’d find Lysandra with you. Though, I should have guessed since I knocked on her door first and her lady’s maid said she was out.”
“You miss a lot when you disappear to the mortal realm,” Devorah says.
“How’s Katie?” I ask Edina, desperately trying to divert the conversation away from my relationship—if that’s even what it is.
“Huge.”
“And having a boy,” Eldoris adds.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t care,” Radley snipes, and Devorah flicks him again. “What? I want gossip. You two have been holding out on us.”
“Since when are we required to share information about our sex lives?” Puck asks. He stretches his arm along the back of the loveseat and brushes his thumb across my shoulder. It’s a small comfort, but not enough to draw attention.
“Since always,” he whines. “Devorah, back me up.”
“Nope,” she replies, drinking deeply from her wine glass. Radley scowls at her, then looks at the others in the room who become very interested in their drinks.
“Sorry,” Larisa says when he finally gets to her. “Not all of us are exhibitionists.”
“I’m not asking you to bang one out in front of us, but a couple of details wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“Bang one out?” Baxter chortles.
“I think we should talk about the trial,” Eldoris says—ever the peacemaker. Radley pouts, clearly upset we won’t be swayed to talk about our sex lives, but he lets it go.
“I think Lysandra will be fighting me,” Edina says, then looks to Devorah for confirmation.
“I know nothing.” She raises a hand in surrender. “They’ll tell me about an hour before they tell you. Possibly not at all for this one.”
“Who is this mysterious ‘they?’” Izar asks.
“The monarchs.”
“Why am I fighting you?” I ask Edina.
“You need someone of similar magical prowess. We’re both strong, we trained under the same pain-in-the-ass tutor—”
“True.”
“—and they know I won’t let you win.”
“Aw, you wouldn’t?” I bat my eyelashes at her.
“No way in hell. Nothing personal, I’m just massively competitive.”
“I agree with Edina,” Larisa says. “I thought they might pit you against me or Hades since we’re closer friends, but they’ll want to make sure your opponent doesn’t throw the match.”
“Thanks, I’m very wise,” Edina says, fluffing her hair.
“Then who do you think will be my opponent, oh wise one?” Puck quips.
“Me,” Eldoris says. “Because I won’t let you win, either.”
“You could,” Puck says, leaning into the last word and drawing it out.
“I don’t like you enough to let you win,” Eldoris says. Puck rolls his eyes, but I get the feeling Eldoris isn’t completely kidding.
“Have you been training?” Edina asks us. We nod. “That’s one thing you have on us. We’ve been playing babysitter in the mortal realm.”
The group falls into speculation on what’s to come, but the longer we talk, the more my stomach sinks. On the positive side, I don’t think Edina will kill me, and I think she’ll surrender before it gets to the point where I’d have to kill her. But there’s no doubt she’ll do everything in her power to help Puck win.
Then, there’s the question of Puck. I can’t imagine we’ll continue our truces after one of us is declared the victor. I knew this was coming, but now that it’s almost here, I’m dreading it with every cell in my body. We have two days before the third trial. Tomorrow is a ball—because of course it is—and then, it will be time. When they announced the reprieve, I was angry about the extra time, but now I see it as a gift.
“Princess,” Puck murmurs, and my eyes lift to his. He wears the same expression of dread I do. “Would you like to go somewhere? There’s a place I’d like to show you.”